His early career as a preacher and missionary put him in Japan and Argentina before and during World War II. An author and teacher, he was called a walking encyclopedia of 20th-century Baptist life.

“Dr. Ramsour officially retired from BUA 35 years ago but remained closely tied to this school that he loved so deeply until his last breath,” university President René Maciel said in a statement. “It was a great encouragement to me to know he prayed, several times every day, for this university and for me. I will miss him greatly.”

Ramsour spent 21 years as a foreign missionary in the Southern Baptist Convention, serving in Hawaii before it was a state, as well as in Japan and Argentina.

He and his late first wife, Vera Mabel Ramsour, left Japan in 1939. Some of his colleagues died in Japanese camps during World War II, his son said.

He then was a teacher and administrator at a seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where some of the school's students were imprisoned and teachers were under constant surveillance, his son said.

After the war, he ran several Baptist churches in Hawaii.

In 1960, he took over the Mexican Baptist Institute, which became Baptist University of the Américas.

He wrote two books, “Extending God's Reach” and “The Entrance and Activity of Evangelical Christianity in Hawaii.”

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H.B. Ramsour Jr.

BORN: Jan. 11, 1911, Palestine

DIED: May 28, 2011, Dallas

SURVIVORS: His wife, Violet E. Ramsour; a son, David Ramsour, and his wife, Carol Ann; two daughters, Jeanne Horne and Carolyn Mosley and her husband, Don; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.